Cultcow EvaXephon / Yanderedev / Alex Mahan / Alexander Stuart Mahan / cannotgoogleme - Edgy weeaboo coomer with pedo tendencies and 15+ years internet history as a lolcow, now known as a disaster developer behind eternal debug build called "Yandere Simulator", confirmed groomer and dollfucker

[Activelo]

The “Mysterious Disappearance” of YandereDev (A)

Every now and then, I check the latest comments on my main YouTube channel. There’s always a lot of…

• He hasn’t uploaded anything since last Christmas? I guess he gave up on making that game, after all.
• So, whatever happened to this guy? Did he completely disappear from the Internet?
• No videos in 11 months…did he die? Does anyone know if he’s dead?

This is kind of stupid, because I’m active on tons of websites. I always upload at least 2 new builds of the game every month, I document the current state of the game’s development on this blog, I post previews of upcoming content on Patreon, I occasionally stream on Twitch, and sometimes I even upload short Yandere Sim videos to my 2nd channel. YouTubers even play the latest updates when I add something significant to the game! How can anyone be dumb enough to actually think that I’m dead, when there are so many different ways to verify that I’m still actively developing the game?

Apparently, uploading a YouTube video is the one and only way to prove that you have a heartbeat. So, I made one:

(video)

As you can tell from the title and thumbnail, it’s meant to be a bit humorous.

There are a lot of things going on in this video:

• It’s one of the few videos on my channel that features voiceover narration from someone that isn’t me. The dulcet tones you hear in the first minute of the video belong to Th3Birdman. Hot damn, that man has a godly voice! And he understood exactly what kind of narration I wanted for this video!
• The production values of the video – the first minute, at least – are high above the production values of a normal YandereDev video. Color grading! Vignetting! Kinetic typography! Drop shadows! Wow!
• This is the first time I’ve represented myself using a 3D animated Vtuber avatar in a video on my main channel. I’ve been doing it for a long time on Twitch and my 2nd channel, but this will be the first time that many of my main channel viewers are exposed to “Vtuber YandereDev.”
• I cover a million different topics rapidly in a very short timeframe! I explain why I haven’t been around, I describe everything I’ve been working on, I describe all of the places where I’m active, and I try to communicate – with the force of a sledgehammer – that people should, at the very least, check my blog before they assume I’m literally deceased.
• Midori returns for the first time in several years, portrayed by her original voice actress, the talented Caitlin Myers! I hope that the fans appreciate it!

I worked hard on this one. Even though it’s only 3 minutes long, it took a lot of preparation and work. It’ll be one of the only two videos that I will upload in 2022, so I wanted it to paint a nice, positive picture of the current state of the game’s development.

Yes, that’s right, you read that correctly – I’ll be uploading one more video this year. All of my yearly traditions are very well-known at this point, it should be extremely obvious what to expect. But, I still hope that you will look forward to it and enjoy it when it comes out!

Local archive

 

[Activelo]

You’ll Be Mine For Christmas – A Yandere Simulator Christmas Carol (A)

Every year, I upload a yandere-themed parody of a classic Christmas song, with vocals provided by the incomparable Michaela Laws:

2015: It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Murder
2015: Yandere-Chan Is Coming To Town
2016: You’re A Mean One, Yandere-chan
2017: Senpai Love Me
2018: Jingle Bells
2019: It’s The Most Murderous Time Of The Year
2020: Senpai, It’s Cold Outside
2021: A Yandere Christmas Song

And, as always, Michaela has delivered another stellar song this year! This year, she sang a parody of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” You can listen to it below!

(video)

The artwork for this video was provided by OMGayano, a name that you probably recognize from the many times her artwork has been posted here.

The next development update will be released on January 1st.

I hope that you have a Merry Christmas!

In Discord-related stuff:

Alex claims that Osana in the demo is supposed to represent the difficulty of the 5th/6th rival.

"Anyone complaining about Raibaru being too strong is simply lazy or unaware of the game's many mechanics that allow you to kill Raibaru."

He would really like to take a vacation.

 

[Adamska]

In reality, he got angy that people could casually break his "game" over its knees and shoved bullshit into it to try and stop it. Because god forbid you find it hilarious that speedrunners can beat your game super quick. Again, he had a guy from TinyBuild that could actually code for a while, but he wanted the attention of being the coder and fucking sunk that deal.

 

[Activelo]

The game appeared on a Turkish news show yesterday. Title roughly translates to "Dangerous game - atv main news December 25, 2022"

And just a few hours ago, a news article came out about it. The entire thing is just the consulted experts (aka psychiatrists, lawyers, head of visual communication design) complaining about how evil and dangerous the game is.

Yandere Simulator darkens tiny lives! Parents beware: it's not a game, it's brutality!​

The Yandere Simulator game, which has recently targeted middle school and high school children, darkens tiny lives. Long-term use of mobile phones, tablets and computers by children and young people has frightening results.​

Entry Date: 26.12.202208:25 Update Date: 26.12.202209:17

The fact that a similar murder scene took place in the simulation game, which came to the agenda with the murder of a 7th grade student in the school toilet in Mersin in recent months, revealed the chilling truth.

The simulation game, which has millions of players and viewers, gives young children the techniques of murder and encourages them to kill. We asked the experts about the psychological, social and legal effects of this game. Here's what they said;

AFFECTS THE SUBCONSCIOUS INDIVIDUALS WITH PROBLEMS WITH GAME INFRASTRUCTURE
Assoc. Dr. Psychiatrist Armağan Samancı; "The fact that people do things in their dreams is reflected in their daily lives. If they want to do something in their dreams, this is reflected in their real life. Especially in people who have a tendency to aggression and harm others in their infrastructure, the tendency to reflect this on reality may be higher.

The virtual world game world is a very difficult and weak world, especially where the controls of the states are difficult. It turns out that something is harmful after a long time. It's too late in these games when such harmful consequences are revealed. Since such games are made with purely commercial concerns, there is no social judgment. It is done to activate people's urge to gain pleasure. Here too, whatever you do to win is permissible.

The essence of our traditional society is about raising good individuals. These games were the exact opposite of this state of society. It is a structure that is in stark contrast to the sense of social well-being. The solution is difficult here, but the virtual world must be governed by real-world rules and comply with laws and regulations.

"HORRIBLE GAME"
Marmara University Faculty of Communication Head of Visual Communication Design Department Assoc. Dr. Ali Murat Kirik; "A simulation game, which takes place in a high school and where the task of the player is to kill all the opponents in the school one by one, has become increasingly popular in recent days. Although the age limit in the game is +18, the violence, blood and bullying in the game is especially for children in the developmental age. has become a potential threat.

Children who identify with the winning character as they commit crimes and murders are undoubtedly likely to cause peer bullying in schools. Unfortunately, we can determine from past experiences and cases that children who use violence against each other at school are unintentionally inspired by the scenes in cartoons and games. In the play, stealing the belongings of female students, torturing, strangling, injuring and killing people after abducting them is presented as if it is a perfectly normal act," he said.

"EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE TO REACH THE PURPOSE IN THE GAME"
Assoc. Dr. Kırık continued: "The theme of "even death is permissible to reach the goal" is clearly presented in the game. Even a musical instrument is used by the main character as a crime tool. The extent of the danger is also evident when children create fan pages and share these and similar violent games on social media. somehow reveals.

Games containing different elements of violence can encourage children to engage in dangerous behaviors towards their peers. As a matter of fact, there are different studies in the literature that children with a tendency to violent games are more aggressive than their peers.

DO DIGITAL DETOX, PLAN ACTIVITIES WITH CHILDREN
"In order not to face such cases, it is extremely important to spread media literacy and to carry out awareness activities for children in schools. Again, it is very useful for parents to be good observers in the digital age, to follow their children, by strengthening the communication within the family, in order not to face such problems. "Digital detox by leaving smart devices aside and activities to be planned with children are also essential in combating digital game addiction."

MAY BE AFFECTED BY THE GAME VIDEO
Lawyer Tuğçe Barışhan said: "Our children, whose games, lessons and communications are digitized, are constantly under the influence. In addition to the advantages provided by technology, the risk it causes is also quite large. It has not yet reached the awareness of how big and important social problem is child abuse and neglect. We are in the situation.

Although there are regulations to prevent neglect and abuse of children in various laws and international conventions to which we are a party, unfortunately these provisions are insufficient to meet daily needs. The close circle of the boy who was dragged into crime who killed a friend of his in Mersin recently drew attention to the effect of the game played by the boy and the videos he watched. However, unfortunately, when evaluated from its legal aspect, the legal system can only intervene in children in case of abuse or neglect.

"THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR IT IS EXPOSED TO DAMAGE THE ENVIRONMENT"
"In our legal system and in many countries, the responsibility of caring for and raising children falls first to the parents, and unfortunately, many parents cannot show the necessary attention and care to their children due to socio-cultural and economic inadequacies. Although the Child Protection Law No. 5395 provides some protective and supportive measures, in practice it is only a complaint. It is seen in the form of intervention on and mostly after great damage has occurred.

I would like to emphasize the importance of mental health as well as physical health of children. As seen in this last incident, the psychological factors that children are exposed to do not only deteriorate their health, but also cause them to become harmful to their environment. In such cases, protective and supportive measures can be taken about children, and these decisions are; The child's mother, father, guardian, the person responsible for his care and supervision, can be taken by the child judge upon the request of the Social Services and Child Protection Agency and the Public Prosecutor or ex officio.

THE FAMILY LOAD IS HUGE
"However, in cases like this last incident, the family did not take the necessary measures to protect the child's mental health, or the child could not notice the symptoms and failed to protect the child's health by neglect. There is even the case that they lose their custody rights completely.”

 

[Natsuki]

Tbh he could have said that the family moved into the are where Shishuta Town is. Also a quick Google search brings up the kanji alphabet which would make the surname あいし (a-i-shi) which is how aishi is actually spelled if I'm not wrong and it looks more appropriate if we take consideration that it's in kinda modern day Japan (also Ayano would be あやの if it was actually written in Japanese and it looks way better than the way Alex is putting the names plus he could put the subtitle/true name shit as a way to see how it's pronounced. But then again it's Alex so it's obvious he would do the bare minimum) seriously if Alex would have spend like 20 minutes on Google with the kanji alphabet on the tab he could have made names like midori gurin look good by putting them in actual Japanese but we'll what can we expect from the guy who studied Japanese high school through the ecchis he watched

 

[lumaleelumabop]

The Original, Alternate Ending to “Driving Your Rivals To Murder in Yandere Simulator” (archive)

I’ve got something super exciting for you today! It’s something that I’m tempted to describe as “lost media” – a video that was created early in 2017 that I thought I had lost forever. What is it? It’s the never-before-seen first draft of one of my most popular videos! Now you can see the original ending to “Driving Your Rivals To Murder in Yandere Simulator”! Take a look:

In this version of the video, Musume is murdered in Ayano’s basement, instead of a warehouse. Also, Ayano stays with Kokona instead of leaving and calling the cops on her. Ayano’s plan was to forge a bond with Kokona by helping her dispose of Musume’s corpse, rather than eliminate Kokona by getting her arrested by police.

This video was originally created on March 22nd, 2017. The final version of the video was uploaded on Sep 30, 2017. The video was in production for so long because I made dozens of adjustments to the artwork and script, which transformed it from this early draft into the final version that you’re all familiar with now.

I hope that you enjoy seeing this never-before-seen piece of Yandere Simulator history!

 

[Activelo]

More excuses for why he isn't revealing his pre-crowdfunding checklist.

In a rare case of a user not getting banned on sight, Alex excuses not getting a team to help with the game because it costs money. Because we all know how well his partnership with Tinybuild went.

 

[lumaleelumabop]

January 1st Bug-Fixing Update (archive)

Hello! Happy New Year!

I’m sure you’re curious about the status of the 202X Tutorial, so here’s an update: 14/15 tutorials are complete, and all of the voice acting is recorded, but the cutscene hasn’t been completed yet. There is very little standing in the way of the tutorial being released, but it depends entirely on the availability of the animator in charge of the cutscene. If it takes too long, though, I’ll just release the tutorial with a simplified cutscene, and replace it later.

Don’t worry, though – every day not spent working on the tutorial was spent working on other aspects of the game. I have a new build prepared with 25 improvements and 33 bug fixes. To see the full changelog – and read about my plans for the near future – scroll down past an amazing illustration by MiaOtaku and a fantastic render by a Japanese fan named Saitou Keiji!



Why a bunnygirl suit? Because it’s currently the “Year of the Rabbit” according to the Chinese zodiac!

Osana/Raibaru Jank Fixed

• If you used a stink bomb to separate Raibaru from Osana and then killed Osana while Raibaru was wearing a swimsuit, Raibaru would forget to change out of the swimsuit and would remain in the swimsuit afterwards. This bug has been fixed.
• If you separated Raibaru from Osana and killed Osana at lunchtime, Raibaru would perform an “eating food” animation at her desk instead of performing the eating animation at her usual lunch spot. This bug has been fixed.
• If you attacked Raibaru immediately after using a stink bomb on her, Raibaru would spin around during/after the “breaking your arm and apprehending you” animation. This bug has been fixed.
• If you used a stink bomb on Raibaru, and then immediately killed Osana in a way that would cause her to scream, Raibaru would completely ignore Osana’s death. This bug has been fixed.
• If you killed Osana with a weapon attack during her Thursday pool event, she would not play a “being attacked” animation. This bug has been fixed.

Improvements

• When the player runs indoors/outdoors, the protagonist automatically changes her shoes from indoor shoes to outdoor shoes. However, this was interfering with mods that change the protagonist’s textures. From now on, the game will check if the protagonist’s texture is something other than the expected texture. If it’s not the expected texture, the player must be using a mod, so the “change shoes automatically” script will stop running.
• The events of 202X mode take place 1 year after Yandere Simulator’s release date. Because Yandere Simulator’s development will continue throughout 2023 and its earliest possible release date is now March 31st 2024, the timeline that appears at the end of the 1908s Mode “True Ending” has been adjusted so that the events of 202X Mode now take place during 2025.
• It is no longer possible to join a club after 5:30 PM on a Friday. This is because the player wouldn’t be able to perform a club activity with the club that week, and thus the player would just get kicked out of the club immediately after 6:00 PM.
• Ayano will now drop her bookbag / weaponbag when changing clothing or taking a shower. It just doesn’t make sense for her to retain those objects on her body when she’s removing her clothing or showering.
• When Osana finds Raibaru’s corpse (or when Raibaru finds Osana’s corpse) she has a special scripted reaction to the corpse. Sakyu and Inkyu now have the same type of extreme scripted reaction.
• From now on, the “Cinematic Camera” (aim the phone camera and then press the left alt key to make the camera freeze in place) can now only be used if the player has activated Debug Commands.
• From now on, male students will stop “admiring” Chigusa if she is sleeping in the infirmary, since they all recognize how weird it is to creep on a sleeping girl.
• The electric stoves in the Home Ec room looked way too modern for 1989, so they have been replaced with traditional stoves (but only when playing in 1980s Mode).
• The delinquent girls in 1980s Mode now sit in a different place at lunchtime on Week 4, so that the player can’t kill Sumiko too quickly or easily at lunchtime.
• Security cameras will no longer consider you to be suspicious for carrying a concealed body, if you’re carrying the body at Cleaning Time.
• The act of carrying a bloody painter’s smock will no longer be considered suspicious, since people will assume that it’s red paint.
• Your mop now becomes bloody after cleaning up the bloody mess that Osana leaves behind after the fan elimination.
• The “Visibly Bloody” warning will no longer appear onscreen if you are bloody while wearing a painter’s smock.
• Raibaru will no longer reposition herself when the player is talking to Osana, since it looked really awkard.
• Updated the appearance of the young child character visible in the town in 1980s Mode.
• Created new student portraits for Horuda and the gardening club girls.
• Updated Riku’s hair model (which hadn’t been changed since 2014).
• Replaced the hair models of Horuda, Yuna, and Beshi.
• It is now possible to edit Senpai with Pose Mode.
• Updated the appearance of the nurse in 202X Mode.

Fixes

• If the player tried to perform a club activity during a Mission Mode mission, they would just get an instant game over. This is because the only acceptable way to end the day in Mission Mode is by exiting the school using the pink “portal” near the entrance. From now on, the player is no longer allowed to attempt to perform club activities during Mission Mode.
• If the player alarmed a student council member and got sent to the counselor while the student council member was investigating a suspicious object on the ground, the student council member would forget the thing they were investigating and would also stop reacting to the player’s actions. This bug has been fixed.
• If a student council member was reacting to a corpse, and the player approached that student council member holding a non-suspicious weapon, the council member would shove the player and then forget about the corpse. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player tranqulized a student, put her into the kidnapping box, then did the delinquent beat-em-up minigame, then returned to the kidnapping box, the tranquilized student would be T-posing outside of the box. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would cause a rival and her suitor to slide across the ground in circles if the player was sent to the counselor while the rival and suitor were under the confession tree waiting to perform their confession animation.
• If the player repeatedly giggled in the presence of a faculty member, they would eventually get angry and say the “I’m sending you to the guidance counselor” voice line, but nothing would happen. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the game from acknowledging that a rival had been eliminated if the rival was dismembered after her death, but the dismembered limbs were not disposed of and were discovered by the police.
• Fixed bug that could result in a character “glitching” out of the “having a physical struggle” state if they entered that state while they were in the middle of the “turning off noisy radio” state.
• Fixed bug that would prevent a student from finding their phone on their desk the first time they checked their desk, if they had been performing a “patrol” action before their phone went missing.
• Fixed bug that would prevent characters from being able to pathfind properly if the player saved and loaded the game while a student was performing a “reacting to camera” animation.
• Fixed bug that would cause a teacher to run around to the other side of a corpse when inspecting the corpse, instead of approaching the corpse in a straight line to investigate it.
• Fixed rendering error that would cause the trash cans underneath the tables in the Science Lab to flicker in and out of existence depending on the camera angle.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the game from rendering the ground properly when the ground was viewed through the little windows near the bottom of the gym walls.
• Fixed bug that was preventing the game from remembering how many photographs the player had taken when the player saved and loaded their game while at school.
• There was a bug that would allow the player to complete Kuu Dere or Geiju’s Tasks by simply giving them a book from the library. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would cause tarp bags to float in midair if the player picked one up or set one down nearby the spot where the tarp bags had spawned.
• Fixed bug that would cause the player to automatically get kicked out of their club if they hadn’t attended a club activity on Friday specifically.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the protagonist’s club accessory from re-activating if she put on club clothing while inside of the shower building.
• Fixed bug that prevented Sanity from dropping during circumstances when it was supposed to drop (such as using the fan elimination on Osana).
• Fixed bug that would cause bully characters to write bully grafitti on their own desks if they found their lost phone on their desk.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the game from advancing forward to the next day if the player played the Maid Cafe Minigame on Sunday.
• Fixed bug that would cause Chigusa’s fans to fail to return to their routines properly after she had been expelled from school.
• Fixed bug that would cause Dafuni Bureiku to float in mdair on Tuesday if she witnessed Ayano commit murder on Monday.
• Fixed bug that prevented the YouTube Chat Interaction “Summon Nemesis” feature from actually making Nemesis appear.
• Fixed bug that gave the Student Council girls unusually fast “looking at you with curiosity” animations.
• It is no longer possible to attend class while Osana is running to inform Senpai of a corpse or murder.
• Fixed bug that would prevent teachers from being able to pathfind to corpses on the school gym stage.
• Fixed bug that was preventing amnesia bombs from working properly in the Alphabet Killer Challenge.
• The player’s Physical Strength is now automatically set to max in the Alphabet Killer Challenge.
• Fixed bug that would cause the car battery to disappear if the player saved and loaded the game.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to take “Sneak Panty Shot” photos from behind walls.
• Fixed bug that caused Miyuji to appear as though she had two pairs of eyebrows.
• Fixed bug with Otohiko’s portait.

Rendering Changes

I made some adjustments to the way that the game renders the school environment in this build. If it lowered the framerate, or if it created some new rendering bugs, please tell me, and I’ll revert the changes in the next build.

Annual Patreon Transparency Report

It’s January, and that means it’s time for me to write one of my yearly Patreon Transparency Reports, where I disclose how much money I made from Patreon this year, and how it was spent. That post will be coming soon – if not later today, then within the next few days, for sure.

More Patreon Previews

I always feel worried that I’m not posting things on Patreon frequently enough, so here are some things I plan to post in the near future:

• Concept art for two new rooms being added to the school in the near future
• Information about the upcoming character models, including preview images
• A list of items remaining on the “things I want to add to the game before the crowdfunding campaign” checklist.

I’m always trying to brainstorm cool things that I could be posting on my Patreon (that wouldn’t subtract from development time), so if you think of anything that would be a good Patreon reward, please let me know!

Japanese Fan Appreciation Post

Over the past year, I’ve been building a collection of extremely impressive Yandere Simulator fan art, which was created by Japanese fans of the game. Usually, I include a piece of fan art in every blog post…but at this point, I have DOZENS of Japanese fan illustrations, and even if I made 5 new blog posts every month, it would still take me years to share all of this cool artwork. So, I was thinking of doing a single massive “Check out all this cool artwork!” post – a Japanese Fan Appreciation Post where I put a spotlight on the amazing artists who have produced gorgeous Yandere Sim fan art over the past year. The start of a new year seems like the appropriate time to do that, so that blog post will probably be coming soon. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

More Videos on 2nd Channel

I have a massive number of ideas for short/simple videos that I’d like to upload to my secondary YouTube channel, but I almost never go out of my way to create those videos, because I keep thinking to myself, “I should use that time to work on the game, instead…” however, if the majority of people would be okay with it, I’d really love to upload more short/simple videos to that channel. So, let me know in the comments how you feel.

Anniversary Stream

I don’t mention this very often (once a year, in fact) but I started streaming video games on January 17th, 2009. Every year, on Jan 17th and 19th, I celebrate my “streaming anniversary” by streaming the first two games I ever streamed. I’ll be upholding the tradition again this year, so stop by my stream on those days, if you’d like to celebrate with me.

In Closing

Wow! That was a lot of different topics to discuss. I hope that you’re looking forward to all of these things that’ll be happening in the near future!

Once again, Happy New Year – and thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!

Since it's a new year, I want to take a look at how the Patreon did over the course of 2022.

I don't know what happened in the last two months that caused more people and donations to come in.
Right now the Patreon sits at about 560 patrons with about $2000.

In other news, Michaela Laws made a new Yandere rap battle (even though she said she wasn't going to do anymore).

I think now is a good time to bring this back.

 

[Kiwi Kitty 2.0]

Can't respond but she made another one cause she's a hopeless and talentless VA (if you can even call her that) amd she knows YanSim is her only chance at ever being relevant

 

[ｌａｉｎ]

Can't respond but she made another one cause she's a hopeless and talentless VA (if you can even call her that) amd she knows YanSim is her only chance at ever being relevant

I'm amazed anyone still cares about this guy after all the shit that he has done and the fact that he is just a creepy individual. (Not us, just people in general I mean) All the time he made editing videos or streaming even before he made Yandere Sim and he still hasn't finished the game. I can't say I'm surprised.

I thought after the whole TinyBuild debacle, he would just crash and burn, fade away after he either finished his game or was cancelled or something but he's still around?

 

[whatever I feel like]

I just wanted this game to be another Party Hard. A decade later not only is it not that, it's not even close to being done, it's morphed into a story game with the dev being independently famous for being retarded.

And the real Party Hard 2 wasn't great either.

 

[Snusmumriken]

Tbh he could have said that the family moved into the are where Shishuta Town is. Also a quick Google search brings up the kanji alphabet which would make the surname あいし (a-i-shi) which is how aishi is actually spelled if I'm not wrong and it looks more appropriate if we take consideration that it's in kinda modern day Japan (also Ayano would be あやの if it was actually written in Japanese and it looks way better than the way Alex is putting the names plus he could put the subtitle/true name shit as a way to see how it's pronounced. But then again it's Alex so it's obvious he would do the bare minimum) seriously if Alex would have spend like 20 minutes on Google with the kanji alphabet on the tab he could have made names like midori gurin look good by putting them in actual Japanese but we'll what can we expect from the guy who studied Japanese high school through the ecchis he watched

That’s hiragana, not kanji—nor is there a kanji “alphabet.” Kanji is ever evolving and more akin to pictographs, with symbols being built on combinations of smaller symbols (or “radicals”.) You can have a homophobe surname as well that sounds the same but uses different symbols; for example, the surname “Doi” (どい) could be spelled as 土井、土肥、or even 土居。Even Ayano could be spelled 綾乃 or 綾野。Midori Gurin’s surname would have to be spelled with katakana (a blockier, reduced alphabet for foreign loan words/onomatopoeias/etc), since it is not meant to be a surname but the world’s worst pun on the English word “green,” hence Green Green. I’m not sure what you’re on about with “aishi” but that’s not even a surname used in Japan. Not to mention, he would be shooting himself in the foot (if it hasn’t been shot off already) by putting his characters’ names in a language that his primary audience can’t read.

Alex is a massive weabtard and his attempted “homages” to Japanese culture (aka the cherry-picked subset of it that caters to his mentally ill JK obsession) is nothing short of embarrassing, but it’s kind of retarded to say a 20 minute google search would have fixed this if you couldn’t do one yourself.

 

[AssignedEva]

The electric stoves in the Home Ec room looked way too modern for 1989, so they have been replaced with traditional stoves (but only when playing in 1980s Mode).

Oh thank God. I take it all back, fully understandable why Alex is taking so long to release the game now, he truly is a talented dev.

 

[Humbert Humbert]

I cannot respond but I internally laughed at him saying that it’s currently the Year of the Rabbit. It is not, the Chinese New Year starts on January 22.

 

[Schwarzwald]

You can have a homophobe surname as well

Ahh, yes. Such as "Ywnbaw" or "Queersarntpeeple."

 

[Snusmumriken]

Ahh, yes. Such as "Ywnbaw" or "Queersarntpeeple."

Akdjfksjga I meant to write homophone. The gay thoughts have taken over my autocorrect.

 

[Activelo]

Another foreign news station talks about the game.

2022 Transparency (A)

Hello!

I have many festive annual traditions, but this particular tradition is quite different from the rest.

At the beginning of each year, I write a post describing how I spent the money that I received through Patreon throughout the previous year, and my plans for the upcoming year.

So far, I've written transparency reports for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Welp, now it's time to talk about 2022!

Here is how much money I received through Patreon over the course of 2022:

• January - $2,127.45
• February - $1,912.63
• March - $1,900.65
• April - $1,818.63
• May - $1,752.94
• June - $1,735.72
• July - $1,989.98
• August - $1,914.20
• September - $1,907.15
• October - $2,038.62
• November - $3,129.17
• December - $2,310.51

This means that I made a total of $24,537.65 through Patreon in 2022.

Way back in 2015, I made a decision: on any month where I made more than $3,500 through Patreon, all income past the $3,500 mark wouldn't go to me; it would be be put into a "fund" that would used to compensate the volunteers who contribute to the game. I referred to this fund as "the surplus."

The Surplus

From 2015~2018, I always made at least $3,500 per month through Patreon, so the surplus was always growing in size, eventually growing larger than $20,000! However, starting in 2019, my earnings dropped beneath $3,500 per month, so the surplus stopped growing. At the end of last year, the surplus was at $19,955.84.

Throughout the entirety of 2022, I primarily worked on optimizations/user-requested features/quality-of-life improvements. Very little of my work actually involved requesting new assets from anyone. So, I only had to compensate three people this year:

• Julietta_00 - $210 (3D Models)
• CameronF305 - $229 (Music)
• Caitlyn Meyers - $150 (Voice Acting)

That's $589 in total! Subtract that from the surplus of $19,955.84, and we get $19,366.84. That's where the surplus is currently at.

2022 Game Development Progress

After the release of 1980s Mode in 2021, I received an avalanche of extremely useful feedback from players. I made a "checklist" of changes and improvements that I wanted to make to the game, based on the observations and suggestions of players. I thought that this checklist would only take me a few months to get through - however, as time passed, more feedback kept rolling in, so the checklist kept growing. Also, as I worked on the game, I made numerous observations, and I started adding more tasks to that checklist - everything from "features I had promised years ago, but never implemented" to "features that would make the game more approachable for new players."

Before I knew it, an entire year had gone by, spent entirely just making fixes/improvements to the game. Of course, I don't really think this is a bad thing, at all; I think it's a GOOD thing for a game developer to just hunker down and make literally hundreds of improvements to his game and make sure that all the bad and janky stuff is fixed. I'm proud of the many ways that the game has grown over the past year! In case you're curious, a large number of those improvements are listed here, on this page:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pcMJ9PjFMR96GAFa98KfCzUSKDMTHaG-vBLk_bTAf5E/edit

(I assume that at least one or two things aren't included on that list; because of the sheer number of changes that were made to the game, it's difficult to list absolutely everything!)

Individually, some of those improvements don't represent huge changes. But, when you think about the fact that there's 20 pages of them, you get a sense of the monumental amount of time and work that has gone into refining and polishing the game as much as possible over the past year.

I haven't gotten through the entire checklist yet, so work on the checklist will continue into 2023. Speaking of that...

Full Checklist, Please?

I keep saying "I've got a checklist of things to do, and I'm going down the checklist..." but I haven't posted the full checklist anywhere. As long as the checklist is a vaguely-defined, nebulous concept, people could get the impression that

1. I'm lying, and there actually is no checklist, nor is there any sort of short-term or long-term plan
2. I'm just going to say, "I'm still working on that checklist! Thanks for your patience!" forever, with no intention of moving forward towards any sort of goal or end-point

So, it's only fair that I post the full checklist publicly and show you exactly what is planned for the future in a convenient list format. It would make this blog post become absolutely huge, so I'll post it in the future - probably tomorrow, so that there is zero time for conspiracy theories to be born.

Just letting you know, though:

• Any item on the checklist could be erased if I decide that it's a waste of time
• The checklist can still grow in the future if I realize that the game desperately needs a specific improvement
• The checklist might contain things that you personally consider to be unimportant, but I'm still going to work on those things anyway, because I deem it necessary

So, what happens after the checklist is complete? Well...

Returning to YouTube?

Obviously, there will come a point in time at which I've finally finished going down the checklist and have made every major and minor improvement that I've wanted the game to have since 1980s Mode was released. At that point in time, I will finally resume making YouTube videos. There are a ton of videos I want to make; first, I want to catalogue the different ways that the game has improved over the past year, but I also want to talk about the game's evolution over time and release some "just for fun" videos like a short story featuring Aoi and Megami (the artwork has been done for years, but it was just never the highest priority to make the video!). Releasing a deluge of videos will be important for re-igniting hype for Yandere Simulator to give the eventual crowdfunding campaign a better chance at success.

With that said, there are a few more loose ends to wrap up...

Workspace Video?

Last year, I said that I was planning to upload a video of my workspace to YouTube, and then I never did it. I couldn't get some parts of my workspace "perfect", so I lost enthusiasm for the idea of showing it off. I could still make a video and post it if anyone really wants to see it, but it's very low on the priority list.

New Character Models?

In last year's transparency report, I wrote a long essay about how much I hate the game's current character models and want to replace them. I stated that the models were in the process of being updated...and then I said absolutely nothing else about it, for a year.

Well, I think I should change that. To prove that work has in fact been done on the models, I think I should write another Patreon blog post within the near future (two days from now?) showing off previews of the current character models, and explaining what work remains to be done on them.

More Patreon Content?

I've said this a million times, but I feel incredibly guilty that I don't provide very many rewards to my patrons. I have no shortage of ideas, but each one of them comes with a problem...

• I could provide patrons with an exclusive wallpaper every month! ...well, then I have to ask an artist to spend their time drawing me a wallpaper when that artist could, instead, be producing artwork for the game. This is counterproductive, since it takes manpower away from the game.
• I could provide patrons with exclusive physical merch, like shirts! ...well, merchandise is expensive to manufacture and ship. If you're donating $20 per month, and it costs $19 for me to manufacture and ship a t-shirt, I'm basically reducing your donation to $1, which would have a pretty damaging impact on my income.
• I could provide patrons with the latest builds of the game first, before it becomes available to the rest of the internet! ...well, I can easily see how this one would bite me in the ass. Instead of interpreting this as "giving rewards to supporters", people would interpret this as "putting the game behind a paywall" and being greedy, and it would just fuel anti-YandereDev hate.

...so, none of those ideas really work. If you have any ideas for rewards/benefits I could offer you that would not take time or manpower from development, would not be costly, and would not lead to accusations of greed, then please write down suggestions below. I really want to hear your thoughts!

In the meantime, I'll try my best to post more of the following on Patreon:

• Previews of upcoming content, and concept art for upcoming content
• Never-before-seen concept art that was created in the past, and may be of special interest to diehard fans of the game.

...but, if I forget to post sometimes because I'm super busy, please forgive me!

In Closing

Hoo boy, there were a lot of different subjects to cover today. However, I think I've finally said everything that I wanted to say! I think that you guys already know this, but just in case, I'd like to remind you that I post on my Wordpress blog way more often than I post on Patreon, so if you haven't seen me post on Patreon for a while, don't panic! Just visit my Wordpress.

That's all for today! Feel free to ask questions in the comments below. And, thank you for supporting the development of Yandere Simulator!

Since archive.vn didn't properly archive the google docs list, I attached it to this post.

Not much happened on the Discord asides from Alex complaining about how those darned trolls make themselves look like the victims.

With the new year comes Alex making slight edits to his "debunk" page. Left is the old version and right is the new version.

 

[lumaleelumabop]

Going back to the Jan 1 blog post:

Because Yandere Simulator’s development will continue throughout 2023 and its earliest possible release date is now March 31st 2024, the timeline that appears at the end of the 1908s Mode “True Ending” has been adjusted so that the events of 202X Mode now take place during 2025.

I just realized that March 31st 2024 would be the 10 year anniversary of development. Alex really thinks he can finish it by then like the plenty of other release dates he kept throwing out? Bold of him to assume that.

Also in the 2022 transparency post, he claimed that he received $3,129.17 in November. I think that's a typo. The Patreon shows that he stayed around $2000 and below throughout the year. Unless there's something I'm missing about Patreon? Does this take into account his other forms of income like merchandise, Twitch donations or YouTube ad revenue? The fact that he still has $19,000 in surplus while comfortably receiving more than $1000 every month tells me that he's taking his sweet time. I really thought more people would've come forward asking for compensation. I noticed that he made no reference to a crowdfunding campaign anywhere in his post. Until I checked the Patreon again...

Pre-Crowdfunding Checklist (archive)

After releasing 1980s Mode, I received an avalanche of extremely useful feedback from players; requests for quality-of-life improvements, suggestions for new features, and observations that highlighted certain flaws and exploits in the game. I put all of this feedback into a massive "To-Do List," and began working on it. As time passed, it gradually evolved into a sort of general-purpose, "Things I want to fix, improve, or implement before the crowdfunding campaign" checklist. I put dozens of different things on the list, from features I had promised years ago, but never implemented to features that would make the game more approachable for new players.

Over the course of 2022, how many checklist items did I take care of? A lot. So many that it's difficult to count the exact number. You can see a (mostly complete) list of (almost) everything I did in 2022 here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pcMJ9PjFMR96GAFa98KfCzUSKDMTHaG-vBLk_bTAf5E/edit

In general, I don't enjoy telling people what I plan to work on next, since it's very disheartening when I say, "I'm going to work on (X) next!" and I hear people respond with, "Ew, I don't care about (X)! Don't work on that! It would be a waste of time!" However, there are people who are very generously supporting Yandere Simulator's development, and I feel that they have a right to know what my current priorities are, and what I'm planning to focus my time on for the foreseeable future. So, I'm going to share the remaining items on my checklist, and I'm going to make it public, too.

The only thing I ask is that you just keep three things in mind:

• I might add new things to the checklist in the future, if I think of anything that I feel is absolutely crucial to add to the game before the crowdfunding campaign.
• I might remove things from this checklist in the future, if I decide it's not worth the time.
• There might be things on this checklist that you personally don't care about, but I'm still going to work on those things anyway.

With those notes out of the way, here are the remaining checklist items, in no particular order:

• Add a tutorial to 202X Mode

If you've been following development, then you're aware that this checklist item is already well underway. You can track my progress on this one here.

• Add support for custom button remapping

Most modern games allow you to re-map the buttons, but Yandere Simulator lacks this feature. I should really investigate this and find out what would need to be done to make it happen.

• Add support for PS4 and PS5 controllers

Unfortunately, enabling support for PS4 and PS5 is going to be tricky. Apparently, they handle horizontal and vertical input differently than Xbox controllers do. Still, I'd like to make it so that people who own PS controllers - but not Xbox controllers - can enjoy playing the game on controller, since that's the way Yandere Sim is honestly meant to be played.

• Add visuals to the 1980s Mode rival introductions

Currently, at the beginning of each week in 1980s Mode, Ryoba gives a monologue that describes her next rival and how she is becoming closer to Senpai. An extremely talented 3D artist volunteer has generously created several dozen renders that depict the events described in Ryoba's monologues! This means that, instead of staring at a solid blue screen, you will actually be able to see the events that Ryoba is describing onscreen. However, just a few renders are missing - maybe 5 maximum. If I can get a handful of volunteers to assist me, then those 5 remaining renders can be made, and then the rivals of 1980s Mode will be able to have visuals during Ryoba's introductory monologues.

• Adjust 1980s Mode student routines so that rivals are never alone

There are dozens of points in time throughout 1980s Mode where your rivals are 100% alone, and can be killed easily with zero witnesses. That's awful! It should be *possible* to kill every rival with a direct attack, but it should require some work from the player - like distracting nearby witnesses or changing the rival's routine. I really want to go through each rival's week and completely re-position all students throughout school so that no rival is ever completely alone, unless the player puts in some work to make it happen.

• Allow the player to adjust the game's resolution from the Settings screen

Most modern-day games allow you to change the game's resolution at runtime, from the pause screen's settings menu. However, this feature is absent from Yandere Simulator! Whoops! I really ought to implement that functionality.

• Allow the player to read manga while at school

The player is allowed to go to the library and study, which grants 1 Study Point and also advances the clock by 30 minutes. Logically, the player should also be allowed to bring a manga book to school and read it in the library, if they wish to. This would allow the player to potentially finish an entire manga book in one day, speeding through manga much faster than usual.

So, is there any reason not to let the player do this? Well, I can think of one reason: balance.

Previously, it was possible for the player to read 5 "Romance" manga within 5 days, completely maxing out the "Seduction" stat in only 5 days. Maxed Seduction gives you the ability to tell any male or female to follow you or instantly leave a location. That's POWERFUL! Seduction basically trivializes every mechanic in the game, so it shouldn't be unlocked that soon or that easily. To balance this potentially-overpowered feature, I decided that it should take a total of 5 days to read through a single manga book. This means that the player can only unlock Seduction at the end of Week 5, and that's ONLY if they commit to reading manga every single night. There! Problem solved, balance achieved! ...balance that would be completely shattered if the player could read manga in the library and finish a book a day, thereby putting us right back where we were before.

So, do I really want to implement a "read manga at school" feature? Maybe...but only for "Enlightenment" and "Horror". Romance manga wouldn't be allowed at school because...it's porn! Porn's not allowed at school! (Well, murder isn't supposed to be allowed at school, either, but let's not be pedantic here...)

• Balance the overpowered "conceal corpse in garbage bag" feature

Currently, the single most broken and overpowered feature in the game is the ability to conceal an infinite number of corpses in an infinite number of bodybags by picking up an item that you can obtain within the first 30 seconds of gameplay. Yikes! This trivializes many of the game's features. This really needs to be changed. How do I plan to change it? I'll explain:

A single garbage bag should not be able to function as a bodybag. The player should have to craft a bodybag by combining garbage bags and duct tape at the crafting table. One roll of duct tape and one box of garbage bags should give the player multiple bodybags - at least 5, though I haven't decided the exact number. After the player has used up the duct tape and garbage bags, they should not be allowed to craft any more bodybags at school that day...but *maybe* they should be allowed to order more tape+bags from Info-chan. Duct tape and garbage bags would respawn the next day, since they are school supplies, and Akademi basically has infinite money for school supplies.

You know, there are such things as vending machines that sell school supplies. What if these vending machines could sell the player duct tape? Hm...

• Change or Replace many 1980s Mode student hairstyles

The cast of 1980s Mode was created through a very unconventional process. First, a set of 50 generic male haircuts and 50 generic female haircuts was designed. Then, all of them were modeled. Then, all of them were distributed randomly to all the students of the school. Then, identities were created for the students. This is exactly the opposite of how things usually work; usually, I create a character's identity first, and then give them an appearance that matches their identity.

This method created a large cast of very bland and unmemorable characters. I would really like to fix this, and I've already taken steps to do so:

• Visual themes and color schemes have been chosen for every club. ("The students in this club should have tidy hair" "The students in this club should have messy hair" etc).
• All of 1980s Mode's currently-existing hair models have been categorized (long, short, messy, tidy, etc).
• A document listing "which hairstyles correspond to which club's visual theme" has been created.
• The document also lists which hairstyles I have an insufficient number of.

With this document as a guide, all I need to do is ask some modeler volunteers to model the few remaining hairstyles that I need in order to have a full set of hair models corresponding to each club, and then I should be able to give a distinct visual style to the students of every 1980s Mode club. I'll probably be posting this document in my Discord server in the near future.

• Create difficulty options for 1980s Mode

When I say "difficulty options", I'm not talking about easy/medium/hard; I'm talking about something completely different. I'll explain.

I've noticed that most players get rid of witnesses by befriending them and then telling them to leave the area. This means that befriending students is totally overpowered. What if the player wasn't allowed to befriend students? What then? What would become the "dominant strategy" if befriending wasn't an option? For the sake of potentially improving the game's design, I need to know. I want to implement a "NO FRIENDS" mode, where you're not allowed to make friends at all, so that I can watch how players maneuver through the game's challenges without being able to simply solve all problems through friendship.

And another thing: after I update the game so that rivals are never alone, there might still be exploits that allow the player to instantly kill their rivals with extremely little effort. If that's the case, I need to know about it. I need to implement a "KNIFE ONLY" mode where the player is challenged to eliminate all rivals by stabbing. Then, by watching the players' "Knife Only" playthroughs, I'll probably get to see some bugs and exploits I never would have seen under any other circumstance.

These kind of restrictions would be educational for me, but could actually be fun challenges for the player. So, I'd like to implement them as an official gameplay feature - difficulty options. "NO FRIENDS", "KNIFE ONLY", and several other restrictions, as well. You might not be able to see the wisdom in doing this, but trust me, it's an essential part of the "quality assurance" process.

• Fun

Strange, I was going to write something here, but I forgot it. It had something to do with a character that I haven't mentioned in a really long - owch, I suddenly have a headache...

• Give all 1980s rivals unique tasks

This one is a "maybe;" if it proves to be something that would require a tremendous amount of time and new assets, I won't do it. But, basically, I really want to give every rival in 1980s Mode a unique task. 1980s Mode was created for the purpose of testing the 10 week system, but it's also the closest thing we have to a "demo" of the full game - and to truly represent what the full game will be like, each rival should have a completely unique task. So, this is something I'm really interested in doing, as long as it doesn't turn into a massive timesink.

• Give functionality to the Enlightenment stat

The Enlightenment stat has been in the game since 2015, and I've rarely dropped a single hint as to what my plans for it are. In short: it's a "just for fun" feature, not an "absolutely essential for the game to be complete" feature. However, it's something that has deep personal meaning for me, and something that I really want to put into the game. It's hard to rationalize spending any time on easter eggs at this stage of the game's development, when I am trying to focus my attention exclusively on high-priority, "must-have" features...but I currently possess most of the assets I would need in order to make this stat functional, and if I get the last few remaining assets I need, I'll probably implement the feature.

• Give functionality to the two remaining demons

This one is way at the bottom of the priority list, but it's still on my mind. Three of the demons in the Demon Realm - Pain, Flame, Empty - can be "summoned", granting the player supernatural powers. Easter eggs, basically. The other two - Death Demon and Lust Demon - have just been standing there without functionality for close to a decade now. I really want to implement their "rituals" and subsequent "rewards", and I know it wouldn't take much time...but it's nearly impossible to rationalize working on easter egg stuff at this point in time, so I can't guarantee it.

• Implement 5 generic tasks

As of now, any student without a unique task is using the same generic placeholder task - "Go to the library and do my homework." Instead of just one generic task, I think that there should be a set of 5 generic tasks, so that there is much more variety in what students ask you to do. "Find my lost (X)" "Get me a drink" "Clean up the muddy footprints" "Take a picture of (X)", etc.

Ultimately, I want every student in the game to have a task that feels completely different from any other student. I never want to implement another "I dropped by (X), can you find it for me?" task again. But, it would take a long time to implement a unique task for every single student in the game. So, for the time being, it would be more time-efficient to simply implement a set of 5 generic tasks.

• Implement Custom Mode and Random Mode

Now that Yandere Simulator has a fully-functional 10-week system, and all of the kinks have been ironed out after a year of bug-fixes, the game now has the ability to support two new gameplay modes that I initially proposed a long time ago:

• "Custom Mode" would allow the player to design an entire student body - including 10 rivals - design routines for them, and play through a 10-week-long gameplay mode where they win their Senpai's love at the end.
• "Random Mode" would randomly generate a 10-week-long gameplay mode, using all of the options available to the player in Custom Mode.

These two modes would massively extend the game's replayability. Tired of 1980s Mode? Tired of waiting for the "original" set of rivals to be implemented? Then create your own rivals, tell the game to generate 10 random rivals, or play through a 10-week gameplay mode designed by another player!

Looking at the system I built for 1980s Mode, which was designed to be as "modular" as possible, I'm 100% confident in my ability to do this...but I'm not 100% sure how long it would take. Building it - and more importantly, testing it - could take just as long as it took to build 1980s Mode...and I could receive so much feedback on it that I wind up spending another year on nothing but fixes and improvements. It really depends on whether or not I would want this to become the new focus of the game - "Yandere Simulator is a platform where you build your own yandere story" rather than "Yandere Simulator is a game about one specific girl eliminating 10 specific rivals."

This item has a very low chance of actually getting worked on, since it would probably take more time than everything else on the list combined - but it's something I think about almost constantly.

• Implement an "aiming" state

Many of Yandere Simulator's mechanics revolve around throwing an object. Bang snaps, stink bombs, and car batteries, to name a few. However, all of these objects are thrown in a really awkward way; you don't get to aim exactly where you want to throw. Instead, you just see a "trajectory arc" appear out of the protagonist's hand. That's lame! There should be an "aiming" state where the protagonist enters a "preparing to throw object" animation and the camera positions itself over her shoulder, and the player is able to precisely fine-tune exactly how and where they want to throw the object.

• Implement a better inventory screen

Yandere Simulator doesn't have a true "inventory" system. You essentially have infinite inventory space (aside from being limited to carrying only two concealed weapons simultaneously). I don't think that I should change this; limiting the player's inventory space would completely change how you have to play the game, and would probably be seen as an annoyance by the majority of players. However, there should, at the very least, be a much better interface for viewing what you are currently carrying with you in your inventory. As of now, it's a vertical text list...lame. It should be a grid or something, instead.

• Implement a better social interaction system

Yandere Simulator's current social interaction system kinda sucks. "Hey, (name)! I really enjoy (topic)! Do you also enjoy (topic)?" It's like an alien pretending to be human. In a way, that kind of suits Ayano - an empty, apathetic, emotionless girl who is completely faking interest in things she doesn't care about - but from a gameplay perspective, it's boring as heck. I already have a design document for a much better social interaction system, and I would really, really love to implement it.

• Implement a "Choose Your Strategy" feature at the beginning of the week

Last year, the most popular livestreamer on YouTube played Yandere Sim for his audience! What an honor! However, he seemed a little lost. He kept saying, "What am I supposed to do?" and walking around Osana without attacking her. It became clear to me that, when someone plays Yandere Sim for the first time, they really have no way of knowing how to execute any of the game's many elimination methods.

There is a feature that was put into the game specifically to aid new players: Info-chan's "Schemes", which are literally step-by-step walkthroughs for each of the game's elimination methods. However, a completely new player isn't going to know that the Schemes menu exists. As I pondered this, I realized that the "Schemes" feature needs to be completely overhauled in several ways:

• Schemes need to be free.
• Schemes need to come from Ayano's own mind, not from Info-chan.
• The player should be incapable of entering gameplay without seeing the Schemes and thus learning all of the potential ways that they can eliminate their rival, and getting presented with the option of being guided through any elimination of their choice.

After the Intro Cutscene, but before the Calendar screen even appears, the player should see a shot of Ayano standing in her room in front of her corkboard, looking at a bunch of photographs. Each photograph should represent a different way to eliminate her next rival. The player will be prompted to select the elimination method that they'd like to use, and then they will advance to the Calendar screen.

If you're nervous about the addition of this new feature, allow me to ease your concerns.

• The player will be able to say, "No Scheme please, I'm gonna freestyle it" and just play the game like normal.
• The player will be able to change Schemes mid-week (unless the Scheme is no longer available, like drowning Osana on Thursday).
• If the player fails the Scheme, there will not be a game over. They will simply be told that they must find a different way to eliminate Osana.

Long-time fans of the game may be displeased to know that there will be a new mandatory screen at the beginning of every week, but this kind of addition is absolutely necessary to guide new players into the experience without them feeling completely lost.

• Implement the 1989 equivalent of Mission Mode

I've heard dozens - perhaps, at this point, hundreds - of players praise the nearly-infinite replayability of Mission Mode, and I'd like to let the player do it in 1980s Mode as well. However, there would be a twist - instead of getting missions from Info-chan, you'd be getting missions from the Yakuza. It could be a straight "port" where nothing changes except the screen where you get your mission and the music that plays, or it could be a completely different type of gameplay mode with complete focus on stealth and not being spotted at all, because you're an intruder at school, rather than disguised as a student. It's something I am super-interested in adding to the game, but I know it would take time, and it's not really completely necessary, just a fun "bonus", so I'm hesitant to do it. I'd need to look into it and investigate whether or not it'd be a huge time-sink or something that could be accomplished quickly.

• Implement voice lines for the 1980s delinquent boys

I have received voice lines for the 1980s delinquent boys; I just haven't implemented them yet, because there is always something higher in priority that needs to be taken care of. I'd like to put them in the game, though. It won't take much time, I just need to decide when to do it.

• Improve the intro cutscene

I was so, SO proud of the intro cutscene when I first implemented it a few years ago...but, looking at it today, I can easily identify a few dozen ways that I can improve the visuals. Some of those improvements would only take a few minutes - like putting doors and windows into the corridor where Ayano meets Taro - but other improvements would require new animations to be created, which would be entirely dependent on volunteer assistance.

• Investigate feasibility of implementing new character models prior to the crowdfunding campaign

Unfortunately, the act of putting new character models into the game will not be a simple drag-and-drop operation. The new character models are meant to use a completely different "system" from the current character models. I think it's going to take at least a solid month of work to refactor everything in the game to be compatible with the new character models. It'll probably create a ton of new bugs, too. So, it would be really risky to try implementing new character models before the crowdfunding campaign - it would delay the campaign by a lot, and could even make the game buggy around the time of the crowdfunding campaign, which would be a disaster. However...updating the character models would be the biggest possible visual indication of how much the game has completely changed since development began. If it could be done BEFORE the crowdfunding campaign, it would make the game look way better, and could give people a lot more faith in the game. It's something that will require some serious thought.

I'll elaborate about the new character models in the near future, hopefully tomorrow if possible.

• Investigate whether or not the framerate would drop if I put more decorations around the school exterior and interior

Have you seen the "New School Environment" mod? It's a mod that adds dozens of new models around the exterior of the school, making it way more pretty and detailed. It looks so good! It's an amazing demonstration of what can be accomplished by simply duplicating some of the game's currently-existing assets and cleverly positioning them around school. It would be trivially easy to replicate that mod and make the school exterior just as detailed as it is in that mod...but I'm worried that the addition of all those models would impact the framerate significantly. So, even though it would be easy (and fun!) to redecorate the school in that fashion, I'm hesitant to do so until I've confirmed for a fact that it wouldn't harm the framerate. Investigating this matter is one of those things that I really want to do, but never find the time for, because there's always a higher priority. I do want to look into it, though...

• Make students along Osana's route perform appropriate animations instead of just chatting

Currently, there are dozens of students positioned along Osana's daily path through school. These students are usually in pairs, talking to each other...but that's boring. They could probably be doing much more interesting things. For example...

Maybe Occult Club students should be investigating "haunted" objects along Osana's route. Maybe Art Club students should be painting beautiful sculptures/flowers along Osana's route. Maybe Gardening Club students should be adjusting flower arrangements along Osana's route. Maybe these characters should be doing, you know, absolutely anything aside from just performing generic talking animations for hours at a time.

With that said...it's easy to decide what some students should be doing, but not the rest of them. Like, should Cooking Club students be cooking food in the middle of the hallway, along Osana's route? Obviously not. Should Science Club students be building robots in the middle of the hallway, along Osana's route? Hell no. Some club students can perform their club activities anywhere, but others really have no business doing their normal actions anywhere but their clubrooms. So, this one is a big "maybe" and might require some smart suggestions from players.

• Re-evaluate student behavior after their club shuts down

Currently, when a club shuts down, all members of that club respond by simply gathering outside of the locked clubroom and chatting. Is this really what they should be doing? Maybe their routines should change in completely different ways. Maybe the Cooking Club should go prepare food in the Home Ec room, instead. Maybe the Art Club should just continue painting things around school. I'm really not sure. I think it's worth considering, at the least, but I'm not ready to make any firm decisions about it just yet.

• Replace modern-day models that appear within 1980s Mode

There are still one or two lingering models/textures in 1980s Mode which represent things that were not invented until *after* 1989. Oops! Most of them are incredibly minor details, but still, those things are "stains" on my game that I want to clean up. Fortunately, at this point, not many of those things remain.

In Closing

Phew! That was a lot of writing. But, it's worth it, to keep you guys informed of what's going on and what's coming up soon. Hopefully, you approve of most of the features on the list. If there are a couple of items on this list that make you roll your eyes and think, "C'mon, man, that's not necessary, don't waste time on that..." please don't be too angry. And if the list grows or shrinks over the next few months, please try to be understanding.

Thank you for supporting the development of Yandere Simulator!

All those changes he wants to make to 1980s mode confirmed to me that this mode would come back to bite him, in addition to the other changes he wants to make to the game as a whole. I still remember when 1908s mode was supposed to be a goal after the crowdfunding campaign. Good luck trying to get everything done before the 10 year anniversary now, Alex.

Yandere Simulator’s Upcoming Character Models (archive)

A few years ago, I posted a blurry preview image and said, “We’re making progress on new character models, you guys!” and then never said anything else about it.

Well, at this point in time, I think I should just show you the un-blurred versions of those images. Here you go:

Before you get too attached to any of those models, let me break some very important news: after a lot of deliberation and testing, it was determined that:

• In terms of how much time has to be spent getting the models to work in the game, and how much of the current code has to be changed to support new character models, it would be much more efficient to simply upgrade the currently-existing character models rather than create entirely new character models from scratch.
• The game has had an official art style established for years now, and it would be super weird if we abruptly gave the game a completely new art style that is completely different from the pre-established art style of the game’s official artwork.

So, with those factors in mind, the decision was made to extensively modify the current models and vastly improve them, rather than completely replace the current models with new ones that feature a new art style.

There is a lot to discuss regarding the new character models, so let’s start at the beginning…

Why replace the character models in the first place?

There are four main reasons to replace Yandere Simulator’s character models:

1. The body proportions of the current models are unappealing and childlike.
2. The current models’ faces are unable to move very much or animate in expressive ways.
3. Most of the characters have “same face” because they all use the same base model.
4. It is extremely inconvenient to ever make any sort of change to the character models, since any change made to one model must also be made to every other version of that model that is wearing different clothing.

The following solutions would solve those problems:

1. The character models should be adjusted to have more stylized and “adult” body proportions.
2. Instead of moving bones to animate characters’ faces, we should use blendshapes.
3. A character’s head and body should be two separate meshes, so that we can have a completely different head model for all characters who are significant enough to deserve unique faces.
4. Clothing meshes should be separate from body meshes, so that every time we tweak an aspect of the body mesh, we don’t need to update every clothing mesh which features that body part.

What work has been done so far?

After some brief testing, it was confirmed that it’s possible and feasible to separate the body+head into two meshes and swap out heads for different characters.

As part of the process of determining and testing this, the following model was created, along with a set of 14 different head models, some of which would be used for rivals and some of which would be used by students:


(This model isn’t 100% finished or final, so if there is something about it that you don’t like, don’t freak out just yet.)

As you can probably tell, the point of this model was to get as close as possible to the body shape and art style of the game’s official character artwork, established years ago by kjech:


Here is a side-by-side comparison of the original character model and the current state of the upcoming one:


As you can see, the new character models are intended to have more stylized “anime” body proportions – slimmer waists, wider hips, thicker thighs. Also, giving each rival a completely unique head gives us the flexibility to make the rival look exactly like the concept art, instead of looking like “Ayano with different color eyes and hair.”

Take a look at this Ayano:


Feels much more like a woman now, right? Here’s a side-by-side of her original body proportions and her new ones:


The new Ayano makes the old Ayano look like a middle-schooler by comparison!

Next, check out Asu:


And Megami:


They actually look like the concept art now! Such a huge improvement over how they looked in the original Rival Introduction video.

Just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a rival only looks as good as her hair model does. A lot of old hair models will have to be remade to live up to the new standard of quality:


A set of facial expressions have been selected to be the blendshapes that all character heads must come equipped with in order to be compatible with the game:

• Smiling Mouth
• Frowning Mouth
• Open Mouth
• Raised Eyebrows
• Sad Eyebrows
• Angry Eyebrows
• Skeptical Eyebrows
• Sleeping Closed Eyes
• Happy Closed Eyes
• Wide Open Eyes
• Optionally: Shrunken Irises. (Might want this to be controlled by a bone instead.)

With all of those different blendshapes, it should be possible to make a character perform nearly any conceivable expression.

What other problems does this solve?

Currently, we don’t have a “wearing socks” model for characters. So, when a character changes their shoes, I’m just putting a sock texture onto their shoes to make it look like they’re wearing socks. This is…pretty janky. So, how are the new character models going to solve this?

The new body mesh will have a blendshape that makes the feet transform so that all of the toes look like one solid unit instead of 5 individual toes. Here, compare the left foot to the right foot:


Slap a sock texture onto that, and nobody can tell the difference:


MUCH better than putting a sock texture onto a shoe, or a sock texture onto bare feet (making the character look like they are wearing a “glove” sock with a little pocket for each individual toe).

I know this is a kind of weird example, but it’s just one way that the act of designing new character models present us with an opportunity to solve some of the game’s oldest problems.

What other problems can this potentially solve?

Updating the game’s character models gives us the opportunity to fix poor geometry, inconsistent texel density, awkawrd UV layouts, etc. Don’t understand what that means? Here, I’ll give you an example.

Take a look at Ayano’s nose:


The line on her nose is crooked! Let’s fix it:


There, fixed! but, it’s still very pixelated, because of low texel density. So, that needs to be fixed too. In short, there’s a million little things we finally have the opportunity to fix.

For almost 9 years, Yandere Simulator has used a system where a character’s face and hair texture are included on the same texture. Obviously, this was done for the purposes of optimization (when multiple models use the same texture, the computer has to do less draw calls / less rendering passes) but the side-effect is that texture artists have to work in a small, cramped space when texturing a character’s hair. While we’re changing the characters’ models, we have the opportunity to decide “from now on, characters’ faces and characters’ hair will go on two separate textures” so that all future hair textures can be much higher in resolution.

How much can we change the characters’ proportions before problems begin to occur?

Another aspect of the game’s current character models that has bothered me for years are their necks. Anime characters are known for their long and slender necks, but the necks in Yandere Simulator are short and thick. While we’re finalizing this new character model, I’ll probably experiment with adjusting the shape of the neck and shoulders, as well…

…however, adjusting the length of the neck would wreck all of the currently-existing animations that rely on the characters’ face being in a very specific point in space. Lengthening the characters’ necks would effect…

• Animations where a character puts their head on their chin
• Animations where a character puts food into their mouth
• Animations where a character raises binoculars to their eyes
• Attack animations where a character’s neck or head is grabbed/stabbed

Etc. So, how could we change this? How could we lengthen the characters necks without changing the position of their faces? Well, I have one idea:


By drastically reducing the size of the characters’ upper trapezius, we could create the illusion that they have longer necks by effectively increasing the distance between their head and their shoulders. Get it? This is one of the things that needs to be tested before the new character models are labeled “final” and are ready to roll out.

Of course, I would also like to change other things about the characters’ bodies, like lengthening their legs and torsos to give them even more stylized anime proportions. You might think that this would probably lead to even more significant problems than lengthening the neck…but there might be a solution. I’m told that it’s easy – trivially easy – to write a script that “retargets” animations, so that all animations created for one skeleton will play flawlessly on a different skeleton that uses different proportions. I have not yet done any testing in this regard, though, so I don’t want to make any promises just yet.

For that matter, you might be wondering, “What will happen to all of the current lip-synced animations once you stop animating a character’s mouth with bones and switch to a blendshape system?” There are two potential solutions:

1. Write a script that makes a characters’ mouth blendshape open and close according to the current waveform of an audio clip that is playing. (The guidance counselor is already doing this – did you notice?)
2. Write a script that tells the mouth blendshape to open and close based on the presence of mouth keyframes.

However, just like the other problem mentioned above, I haven’t done any testing on this yet.

What other work needs to be done before the new character models can be implemented?

There’s somebody who I almost never mention – a certain volunteer who has contributed to Yandere Simulator in numerous very significant ways over the years:

1. He created all of the motion-captured animations in the game, such as the Ayano+Kokona Befriend/Betray animation, the Senpai+Osana interaction animations, and the rival-confesses-under-tree animations.
2. He created the system I use for changing a character’s model at runtime. Dozens of features (and user-made mods) would not be possible if he had never created that system for me.
3. He created many of the shaders that the game uses; the shader for Osana’s tears when she is rejected, the shader for the frosted glass on the windows of the shower buildings, the shader for making shadows+blushes+bruises appear on top of a character’s face, etc.

This guy can do it all; animate, model, texture, script, make shaders, pretty much everything. He specializes in so many different things that it’s hard to figure out how to summarize him; “Technical Artist” probably comes closest. He’s probably the one volunteer who has been contributing to the game the longest, right behind Michaela Laws herself. This is one of the only guys in the world I’d trust with the extremely important job of getting the new character models perfect before they’re implemented into the game…but there’s just one problem.

Out of respect for his privacy, I’m going to be as vague as possible here, but: he was affected by the situation between Ukraine and Russia that dominated the majority of last year. Over the past year, there has been a lot of “I might be able to resume working on Yandere Sim soon!” followed by months of tense silence before I finally hear from him again. The latest news is that he’s currently in the process of moving to another country. It’s really hard to predict when he’ll actually be available to work on the new character models again, but it’s also not possible to blame him for the long wait, since it’s not his fault at all.

One potential solution is to find another technical artist who can make the final tweaks that the new character models need, but the problem is that it’s nearly impossible to find someone…

• …who cares deeply about giving Yandere Simulator the best assets it can have…
• …with his level of skill, knowledge, and expertise…
• …that I personally consider trustworthy.

…so, very little new progress has been made on the new character models over the past year.

Fortunately, I had a giant checklist of things to work on, so being unable to work on one particular thing didn’t bother me that much. But, as the checklist gets shorter and shorter, we’re getting to that point where there is very little remaining for me to focus on that is not the new character models. I still care deeply about getting the new character models into the game, but it’s an aspect of development that can’t move forward until someone adequately skilled is found to fix the problems that remain.

Still, with all of that said, I hope that this blog post has helped to assure you that a tremendous amount of work has been done on the new character models, that there is a clear plan for what remains to be done on them, and that those character models will be an objective improvement once they are finally in the game.

 

[Natsuki]

This motherfucker is still making this game? At this rate he's going to get the world record for longest game development. Like if I'm not wrong the record is at 14 years and he's at the ten year mark. So unless he gets his ass together he's fucked. Also I hope that the volunteer story isn't true and if it's true I hope said volunteer is actually alive and well because this war is fucking tiring since fucking day one

 

[Kiwi Kitty 2.0]

@lumaleelumabop He actually expects he can get all of those done by March 31 next year??? LMFAO nice one Alex